Losing My Hands | Hacker News Reader

Losing My Hands

jxnl.co

61 pointswunki75 comments

I can somewhat relate as I’ve suffered a brain injury. It was similar in that I couldn’t continue to go full tilt everyday. In my mind all my success was based on that: working all the time. Turns out I was wrong; I still make a living but am much more prudent about what I spend time on.

Anyway. After reading all the philosophical quotes etc I felt bad when you ended with this:

>> Despite my injury, I still try to maintain a bulletproof growth mindset. I constantly ask myself why I shouldn't make more money every month.

My friend, even if there is anything to Carol Dweck (severe criticism is warranted there), this is the servant mindset that you just wrote about. Make more money for what? You can’t take it with you when you die and it will not make you happy in ill health.

Oh and you’re right about there not being any moral epiphany or reward in ill health. It just sucks. Feeling good is the opposite: it’s just good. There is nothing else.

Agreed. Maybe it’s the authors way of feeling in control still. To me it further exemplifies the toxicity of this industry always making people feel the need to work endlessly despite the severe health consequences.

>My friend, even if there is anything to Carol Dweck (severe criticism is warranted there), this is the servant mindset that you just wrote about. Make more money for what? You can’t take it with you when you die and it will not make you happy in ill health.

Agreed that money is far from everything when it comes to happiness and health shouldn't be utterly broken striving for it, but your comment reeks of a neatly privileged bubble in which you seem to have enough money and access to resources to ignore just how important they are for doing all the things that do make life better.

No, you can't take it with you when you die, but it's only while you live that actually matters, and being poor can sure as fuck ruin a lot of that decent living, not to mention your health, which money absolutely does help make better.

Apparently some people can't see these obvious details, that billions in the world face every day, even while they criticize others for not having a clearer perspective.

Despite some market imperfections, and non-monetary contributions like caregiving or volunteer activities, the money you make is a very good proxy of the value of what you produce and the impact you have. I can not simply think of a better proxy.

Question stays, however, is "the impact" and the produced value how you measure your own's life fulfillment?

If that's what you care about sure, but should we really care about it more than some other things?

That's right. I need to do a soul search after I am done with my job search.

> Make more money for what? You can’t take it with you when you die and it will not make you happy in ill health.

You can leave it to your kids, hoping it will give them a slightly easier and safer starting position in life, which sort of fits in the basic premise of all life, ensuring the extension of your gene line... or you could spend it all on hookers and blackjack, in the Fender from Futurama style...

Had this experience about 6-8 years ago, when I was 30ish. You know, a bunch of programming hobbies + a programming job + active writing as a hobby + not enough cardio activity.

It all started with a mild discomformt. Then the discomfort becomes something like mild but constant pain in fingers, hands, arm joints where the nerves are. Not pain-pain but unpleasant sensation. Then my fingertips went numb. And it was getting worse with every week.

My company had a great insurance so I went through a bunch of doctors. What they said was "all relatively fine FOR NOW, nerve microtraumas accumulate but don't get enough time to restore".

In the meantime I couldn't do anything that involved touching a keyboard or a screen. A trivial phone call was a problem.

It took a while but I had to reassess my relationship with computers and health.

1. I started doing cardio. Walk a lot. 10k+ steps a day integrated into my routine. Kettlebells and running. Weightlifting. Weight control. The point is to increase blood flow everywhere and let the body fix itself. 2. Less stupid typing, more smart typing. 3. No mechanically clicking keyboards and mice. That's is a nerve hit 1000s right there times a day.

It didn't happen over a month, or even a year. The habit refresh took a long time to develop, years.

But I have my hands back! As a side effect I am in a good shape now, definitely better than in my early 30s.

> 2. Less stupid typing, more smart typing.

Can you elaborate?

I try to pick my battles carefully. This means think thing through proactively. Additional OSS projects happen first in my head then in code.

My hands do feel better these days but I don't just assume healthy hands. Typing is a resource I manage the same way I manage time.

agreed!

>3. No mechanically clicking keyboards and mice

You mean you don't use a mouse or use it infrequently?

Not OP, but I had a boss who specifically bought ambidextrous mice and would switch hands every hour (or so).

Not OP either, for me due to RSI I've switched to use a touchscreen when I can, and alternate the mouse between left/right when I have to use one (Ergo mouse and similar never seemed to do anything for me). As well as a super light/smooth keyswitch keyboard (Fujitsu Libertouch with cut domes).

That might work for some ppl but in my case my fingertips were a problem too.

Light keyswitch keyboards do help, yes. Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard in my favourite but these things are very individual.

Even though I am a linux guy, I use the Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard (NOT the more recent Surface one, it's horrible).

Also a Linux guy and have gone through 3x Sculpts over the years. They are pretty great for their price.

When you mention:

> 3. No mechanically clicking keyboards and mice. That's is a nerve hit 1000s right there times a day.

I'm curious how do you go about replacing the keyboard? You can replace the mouse with touchpads, touchscreens, trackballs etc. but what is you effective keyboard replacement (speech to text maybe)? Or do you mean no clicky-switches (for example Cherry blue)?

I think he meant "no mechanically clicking" as "less typing mindlessly".

No, mechanical clicks, as in "click-click", something that makes small physical jump.

There's a few things that caught my attention. I am too in tech, but from what I understand and my circle, everyone... kinda worked less during the pandemic (especially at the start). How was this person pressured to work so much? He was doing machine learning for a company that offers clothes. How can you derive actual societal value from that? Not saying that the work was not interesting or challenging, just a bit weird take.

He also says he has 3 hobbies, and when the pandemic hit... it burst his bubble? I mean how many hobbies are you supposed to have? I'm not going to have 10 different hobbies to have "resiliency" in my hobbies shall a pandemic arrive.

Also, glaring omission on not sharing the reason how it happened? Everyone here works on a keyboard 8+ hours a day... maybe share what some of us could avoid?

>kinda worked less during the pandemic (especially at the start).

I wouldn't say I specifically overworked for any one employer, but during lockdowns I was definitely spending way more time at a computer overall.

I know quite a few people who worked very long hours during the pandemic. All the other things they normally did with their time went away and they just defaulted to spending more time on work.

author here:

mostly training really interesting models, optimizing recommendation systems, designing frameworks. i was having a lot of fun.

I feel for this person.

Partly though, it seems to me that he will never achieve the results he hopes for. He is a product of the culture - he cannot think outside of the terms he has been given. He says as much:

> Despite my injury, I still try to maintain a bulletproof growth mindset. I constantly ask myself why I shouldn't make more money every month. The worst part is I truly do not know whether this is a ‘good’ mindset to have.

The thing I would say, is that yes it is possible to adopt all sorts of mindsets. The author is likely the product of his upbringing - ie the product of a good school, that has directed his competitive nature, etc. He has easily taken to the provided framework, which promises money! Ok, fine - but this is not what a person actually is, imo. It is akin to growing a tree in an espalier fashion to make it more usable for the gardener - the tree grows, fruits, etc, but does not grow as it would naturally.

To work out what one is requires inner work, uncovering what one is inside oneself - and adhering to that. One needs to listen and be in accord with one's soul. (Which is not an acceptable HN phraseology, I know.) I'm not making a religious point either.

It’s not clear from the article. What was author diagnosed with? They said it was an injury…

It doesn't even say whether they went to an actual doctor, just something about acupuncture physiotherapy and various medical ideas they might have just googled on their own.

In other words: taking rest, listening to your body, and careful exercise (disguised in an alternative medicine package).

Yeah, it would be good to know what the injury was and what caused it. Seems like an important detail.

Seems like a bizarre omission from the article given the number of tangents and topics covered. My guess is that going down the traditional medicine route lead to him being told there was no organic basis to the pain.

As someone who went through a similar experience, I would not be surprised if the author's pain is/was entirely psychosomatic (this doesn't diminish its severity or significance). Probably a direct result of burnout.

Psychosomatic pain is the worst. At least there’s generally something you can do for actual physical pain.

Yeah, I agree. In some sense, tendons remodel more easily than the brain. Somatic pain disorders can easily ruin someone's life.

I strongly doubt that it'd be purely psychosomatic.. Spending 14 hours a day hammering away at a keyboard will physically damage your wrists.

The question here isn't about damage but about what mechanisms in the "pain pathway" are responsible for OP's specific experience of this pain. One day he has sudden, debilitating pain - in both wrists - in the absence of a traumatic event. He's conspicuously omitted any kind of medical diagnosis, and the whole thing is part of an existential crisis on the tail end of an insane, psychologically unsustainable workload. Not a typical presentation of RSI, that's for sure.

You recovered?

It sounded like rheumatoid arthritis.

I recovered, but it took a long time.

I don't know about RA. OPs blog post sounds a bit too optimistic for someone living with untreated RA for 3 years.

author here: i definitly agree its a bit of both. but i will say, taking 2 years off work, still hurts if i build furniture or have to hammer something or turn a lot of screws

author here:

closest thing people gave me was DQT but 10 months of PT didnt help and MRA / XRAY found nothing

Maybe this is why, as an industry, we need to stop glorifying workaholism. Getting RSI for pulling 15h days regularly is as surprising as the Super Size Me guy getting fat.

But well, last week we had a Google exec praise his team for pulling 100h work weeks, so I guess we're not there yet.

My impostor syndrome is cured a little when a machine learning expert mentions acupuncture.

The core of most alternative medicine is: listening to your body, easy exercise, and taking time. In other words, the perfect circumstances for your body to naturally recover.

But then the patient and practitioner attribute the recovery to needles, or energy beams, or homeopathy, or religion.

Well, I'm happy that they recover.

I dunno, my normal doc referred me to some clinic some time that did some kind of accupuncture. I’m not given to the interpretation that he believes in alternative medicine, so there must be something to it.

I thought people sticking needles in me was fucking scary though, so I never went more than the one time.

i dunno man, i was in pain for 2 full years, people try alternative medicine when when main stream medicine does not work, whats a couple 100$ dollar difference does it make?

Doing these every day for 2 minutes might have prevented it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF-RHMI-Oo0

Given that this individual talks about all kinds of treatments he's tried for what happened to him yet no discussion of a medical diagnosis, I'm going to go out on a limb (no pun intended) and just posit that the vast majority of what happened here is mental illness related.

>>I constantly ask myself why I shouldn't make more money every month. The worst part is I truly do not know whether this is a ‘good’ mindset to have.

If you are Sking yourself the same question as the author, consider an alternative animating force: curiosity.

When you're in a rut, get curious. Pursue projects that make you go "huh, I wonder what's going on there". Pursue people that make you go "huh, I want to hear more from this person".

If you're in a manic tunnel of grinding, I bet you're also in desperate need of curiosity.

Ok, so what was wrong with your hands after all? Did you go to a doctor?

Damn that’s brutal.

My hands were getting pretty bad too but then I got a Kinesis Adavtantage 2 and after 6+ months I have no issues. Definitely helped my hand issues

I'm intrigued by how they could be making $500k as a ML engineer for Stitchfix.

stock compensation went up as the valuation of the company goes up. That number is Total compensation, base is probably in the $200k-ish

https://www.levels.fyi/companies/stitch-fix/salaries/data-sc...

I thought it's a repost of the story about a guy who prepared explosive (legally, I forgot which one, perhaps nitroglycerin) in his home lab and had a recepient with the 'thing' explode in his hands.

There was another story from a guy who suffered a PTSD from coding too much, who would have literal panic attacks whenever he would work on something. If you remember it, could you please link the story?

> I went through acupuncture physiotherapy, tried anything that might work and threw as many resources at my hands as I tried to work through not being able to use them.

...no mention of going to a doctor. I have a friend who died of cancer while getting his fillings replaced instead of seeing a doctor because "mercury". I don't know that modern medicine could have cured him, but I sure know getting his fillings replaced didn't.

See a doctor, people!

> Which quickly collapsed into If I can’t work hard, where do I derive my value from?

This really jumped out at me. As a society we have really screwed up royally when so many people derive their value, or own self worth, almost exclusively from work.

People should enjoy their work obvious, that's better than hating it. But especially when you work for someone else, work should ultimately be the "how" behind the rest of your life.

Humans were built to derive value from community and relationships, both with your loved ones and with nature. The fact that we have effectively imprisoned the entire society into working 8-12 hour days 5 days a week just so they can rush to get chores done and do it all over is absolutely horrible.

If you're reading this and this sounds familiar, go for a walk or plant some flowers in fresh soil. Call an old friend or go have dinner with some family and leave your phones at home. Don't let work consume your life, it will never fill the void.

It's a sad story and a good reminder to always keep in mind YOLO!

but I think it's bit exaggerating to say losing my hands, while they're still "there". What about the guys who had their limbs amputated? They even can't swim anymore, don't even talk about cooking or putting on trousers (or self love..)

It's a drama. Yes. I feel for you. I also feel/see a lot of self pityriasis in your thinking/text, like paying lots of attention to own condition and whining about.. I'm in a severe condition by myself, but I always have thought of this "this shit. But others got more shit to bare and have a ticking clock over them"

So, keep up the sanity. Live with your condition. Try to find a relief. Adapt to the new situation - what you already did. Write less text that trend to provoke others feeling pity for you. Or in my words: my problem is my condition and it's my condition that it won't become your problem.

Peace. Wish you the best.

Dealing with hand pain when you’re a computer programmer can be difficult. Here’s the creator of TCL discussing dealing with it in the 1990s

https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/wrist.php

An important excerpt:

“My experience suggests that once you start having RSI problems it is very difficult to get rid of them: it will probably be an issue for the rest of your life, and if you don't act quickly things will get much worse. ”

Compare it to dialysis, where you can't drink when you're thirsty and can't eat a banana and generally have food restrictions, and where you have to go 3x for 4h a week to a hospital. Compare it with cancer and doing the possible against. Compare it to really lost hands caused by sepsis. Compare it to people becoming blind or being blind / suffering hear loss....

No matter if you're a programmer or not, you have to find your way. Each of the samples, and a lot a lot more, are there, (like RSI too?), for the rest of one's life.

So how much of such people do you know? How much of them are posting on a site what they are suffering? I don't know one in my aroundings. I too, do not post anything blog wise. I don't feel pity for my self and I don't want to be pitied by others is my reason. And that's what I say. If one wants to help people in same condition with tips on handling, which is completely feasible, then the text would sound differently.

No matter what condition one have, one must cope with it.

It’s much harder for people without hands to write blog posts too.

Yes.. not even talking about coding. These guys would change places with someone with RSI at once and without hesitation. ... Me too. If one wants to give me his RSI, I give you my things. It's a win-win in my eyes.

This is a conversation about RSI. I’m not sure why people would jump in to tell others how worse off they could be.

there’s no value in that conversation. In fact, it lacks a bit of maturity.

I think it’s kinda relevant when someone presents their RSI as ‘losing their hands’?

As someone who has had their hands on fire from typing, I’d personally like to tell you to shut up. You’re clueless.

Imagine a doctor with your attitude.

People have a real problem that no one has a real answer for. They don’t need to be told how much worse it could be.

I’ve got a GitHub repo where I catalog many RSI instances and treatments.

https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes

As someone who has more severe condition, I tell you you are clueless.

So here we are. You want to shut up as first?

I’ve dealt with the problem for over three decades. Never found a solution other than don’t type until the pain goes away.

I’ve put effort into researching it and gathering the data so others might be able to identify solutions that work for them.

I’m always looking for ways to “cope with it”. If you’ve got something that’s not on my list…

https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes

Thank you. That's what I originally meant. You tell your story. You offer stuff to others with same problem might find very useful.

OP did just whine about in a longish post, how bad it is and how low active that guy now is and so on.. that's public whining. One talks about oneself, do not even think of others - others like me or the other guys, whomever has something different than RSI and who would be happy to change for RSI.

... And then you have someone who is "loosing his hands" -

It's a kick in the face of someone who really lost his hands and now has to cope with a handless life, while the first person complains to not be able to type anymore.

That's what my comment is about. To be modest and think- and thankfull. To cope with the illness, but not to whine about it. That lets everyone feel better.

Currently getting a server error on the Stanford link.

Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210425082459/https://web.stanf...

It is possible to recover.. but you need to rest the joints which will mean no typing for some weeks at least. I’ve had RSI on my ankle and had to not use it for some weeks (walking with sticks). But it’s back to normal now and hasn’t been an issue for years

Yes, it's possible in some cases. In some cases, you might need an operation. Or may be a better doctor. When I was young, I had back pain when I bow/go down. It came suddenly and stayed for more then 2 years -> 2 years of not being able to get things from floor without pain. My doctor here (one of the best in town, Germany), did X-ray, analysis, X-ray, decided to prescribe medication that I can't take. Then he wanted to make an operation, which I didn't want. So, after 2 years of pain, I went to study abroad in China. There, I went to military hospital and ask a guy what could that be, what I have. I didn't tell him the diagnosis of the German doctor. So that Chinese doc looked at me, make me wait outside for 5 mins and when I went in back - really funny story - he took a pencil and with it pulled up my shirt, asking me whether I wear a trouser belt, which I don't do. After I say "no", he told me to pull up my trousers. Suddenly, I felt a light relief of pain.. and I tell you, the next 1 week I always pulled up my pants and the back pain never came back again. Since 20 years now.

So, your tip with resting is exactly that what is needed. But I don't know, whether all conditions can be healed by that, or some still needs medication or operation.

Good luck to all and always pull up your pants!

Variety in ergonomics years before they're needed is helpful.

Shit posture and bad keyboards are not losing your hands. This is ridiculous.

No, it’s not.

I have spinal cord injury due to bad posture (sitting in front of a computer for 20+ years) that led to multiple herniated discs in my cervical spine that are pushing my spinal cord. According to my neurosurgeon it’s quite common nowadays, even in young people in their 20s.

I'm frequently thankful that I had the sense in my twenties to start using a standing desk. I hear of a lot of back problems in my mid-thirties developer cohort.

My hands get tired when I do a lot of typing (these days much more on Slack than in VSCode, sadly), but they don't hurt, and having some ergonomic notes pounded into my dumb head when I was young is probably a lot of that.

Had issues with my hands too.

But wtf man making 500k? And not having some reasonable exit plan at this point?

How uneven do you have to be to be smart enough to make it that far and not just exiting?!

author here:

exiting what? i have like some money saved up i took 2 years off work, i have about 6-7 years run way, but like turns out i like building things?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com